Sunday, May 5, 2013

Adai - Dosa With Mixed Grains

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Adai - Dosa with mixed grains

Adai is a favourite tiffin in our house.  We can have it for breakfast or dinner.  It is quite a heavy food.  We can eat 2-4 adais at a time (adults 2 and children 3 to 4)! When we have got too many guests at home, we do this snack.  We can place two tavas on stove and finish off the work fast, unlike dosa which is not heavy, so people tend to eat more and it takes time! Adai is very nutritious with all the daals.  Normally, we use only the main daals like Channa or bengal gram, thuvar and urad daal but now I am adding flax seeds, kaaramani and kollu etc. which are very very nutritious and we won't use them in ordinary days.  Now, to the recipe:

Ingredients:
  1. Boiled rice - 1 and 1/2 cup
  2. Raw rice - 1 and 1/2 cup
  3. Brown Channa  (I don't use kabooli chana for this) - 3/4 cup
  4. Thuvar dhal - 1/2 cup
  5. Urad dhal (with skin is still better) - 1/4 cup
  6. Kaaraamani - 2 tbsp.
  7. Kollu - 2 tbs.
  8. Flax seeds - 2 tbsp.
  9. Coconut - 1/2 cup or some pieces as shown in the picture.
  10. Red Chillies - 1-12 nos.
  11. Green chillies - 2-4 nos.
  12. Ginger - 1" piece
  13. Capsicum piece - small one (optional)
  14. Hing/asofoetida - 1/2 tsp.
  15. Sugar - 1/2 tsp.
  16. Salt to taste
  17. Coriander, chopped - 1 bunch
  18. Chopped Curry leaves
  19. Chopped onion - 3 (medium sized)
  20. Oil - We use nallennai/gingelly/til oil.  Any other oil also will do.
Method:

Soak the daals and rice and other things as shown in the picture, separately for 3 hours. Wash them and then soak! You can use the same water for grinding.

Grind the rice items  in a mixer first.  It should be ground a little less coarsely (like fine rava batter).  Then grind the daal items coarsely.  Just grind for a short time.  If it becomes like a fine paste, the taste will differ.  Daal should be visible, though not fully.  Mix everything together with the salt, coriander, curry leaves, hing, salt, sugar etc.  Let the batter not be very watery.  You can leave it for a couple of hours and then make adai.

The left over batter can be used the next day or later.  If it becomes a bit sour, it tastes even better! We call it 'pulichcha adai' means 'sour adai'! I soak the rice and daal in the morning and make adai at night.  Or soak at night (just the two rice and Channa daal separately, soak the rest of the daals, add with Channa in the morning and grind. Add coconut, red chillies etc.with the rice and grind).

Apply some oil on the hot tava and spread the batter on that.  Let the flame be medium.  Since the batter is not thin like dosa batter, but with lot of daals, it takes time to get cooked.  I make a couple of holes in the adai as in the picture and add more oil (one or two tsp. to make it crisp).  Turn it after a few minutes (let it be a bit brown in colour) and leave it for a couple of minutes again.  Adai is ready to eat.

Instead of coriander leaves, you can add murungai ilai (Drumstick leaves) which is very good for health or paalak/spinach leaves.

A highly nutritional food item is ready!


Kollu/Horse gram Flax seeds Kaaramani/cow peas/lobia
Ulundu/Urad daal/black gram Thuvaram paruppu/Thuvar daal/Toor daal Kondai kadalai/Brown Channa







Daal and rice, soaked separately! Add the chillies and other things while grinding rice. The batter should not be very watery! Spread the batter on the tava after applying oil!

You can eat the adai with vellam/gud/jaggery, butter (which will be very tasty!),  chutney (coconut, onion, coriander or tomato) or chutney powder. I like to eat it with orange marmalade too!


P.S.: While making any dosa, apply oil on the tava and make a small dosa.  First dosa will not be very good.   Without applying oil, make the next dosa and pour oil after a minute.  Dosa will be crisp.  We use gingelly oil/sesame oil mostly for dosa and idly since this oil is very good for health.  You may not like the taste in the beginning, but you will get used to it later, like we do with olive oil! I didn't like the smell in the beginning!

I have highlighted the captions in grains.  If you click on them, you will know the nutritional value of them.  You can click on the picture to have a clearer view. 

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6 comments:

Ms.Chitchat said...

Nice idea of incorporating all the grains into our traditional adai recipe, looks very tempting.

Sandhya said...

MS. CHITCHAT: It tastes good too! I haven't tried adding soya beans! I don't like the smell of the grain when cooked!

Rama Ananth said...

Very nice and tasty looking adais. This our favorite dish. And even i use all dhals and also I add lots of curry leaves to it so that everything is mixed in the mixie it self, and doesn't go waste
. Before making the adai, I also add onions, some green chillies and lots of curry leaves and Kothmier leaves and also cabbage, it really tastes very good.
We can even add methi leaves/ kerai too. It is a very versatile dish the more you add the more tasty it comes out, and healthy too.

Sandhya said...

RAMA: Thanks for the comment, Rama!

Sometimes I do it without adding onions. Even that is good. I have done with methi leaves too. Forgot to mention here. Everybody in my family too like it!

Shail said...

I am going to make this! :) I still remember the awesome taste of the ones you made for me!

Sandhya said...

SHAIL MOHAN: Tell me if it was good at home and if your husband liked it!